Breadcrumbs

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Now a couple of days into my final week, I can start to reflect on my time here at The High Street Centre. Since my last post, I’ve completed 2 funding bids, totaling over £13,000, almost finished my program, and continued to help out wherever I’m needed.

The bids are for the funding of a holiday club for children with additional needs, and during my time here I’ve supported after school sessions on a Monday for the same young people, which has been really rewarding. Seeing how much they enjoy the couple of hours every week, and imagining the difference it must make to both them, and their family (in terms of respite) has emphasised for me how the funding I’ve applied for, and the program I’ve produced, can make real differences.

I’m on the train home from the Centre for Alternative Technology after finishing the final week of my placement. My four weeks at CAT have been a great experience for many reasons. The people, the work and the amazing natural surroundings have been restorative and given me new energy and perspective. I will miss my morning walk through the ancient woods to the rewilded quarry, the birdsong and the tranquillity of the reservoir.

Throughout my time at CAT I delivered the ZCB talk to a total of 163 people. While the audience figures were on average quite low, I have gained a lot of confidence in delivering aural presentations and public engagement.

I’ve had a rollercoaster ride of a first week at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) situated at the border of the Snowdonia national park in Wales. CAT is an education and visitors centre that aims to demonstrate solutions to sustainability. It was founded in the early 70’s in a disused slate quarry at a time when the scale of environment degradation from human activities was only just beginning to be understood. The early pioneers wanted to develop technology that could be of benefit to humans, nature and the economy. In a similar spirit, during CAT’s existent the quarry has been ‘rewilded’, and now hosts an abundance of wildlife.

The last two weeks have absolutely flown by. I finish my internship today – I’ll be sad to go. I’ve learnt a lot and met some really interesting people.

During my week break the new website went live, and I believe the new neuroscience Journal has been initiated – everyone in the office has been quite busy.

Last week was spent analysing all of the survey data I’d collected, and producing an overall marketing plan which could be used to inform the marketing approach of the BNA. This involved looking at the automatic analysis SurveyMonkey generated, and picking out/discussing the relevant information.

It is the 28th of July, 2016 and it has now been two weeks since I started my internship at the Eden Project. At the start of my first week I had a plan about working on the Nuclear and Geothermal research for the Masterfile and also to keep researching new and emerging technologies’ on the side.

Between the 12th of July and now a lot has happened. At the start of the second week I spent two days on the ‘Welcome week’ meant for new volunteers and employees. This was very useful as it gave me more information the amazing stories behind how Eden came to exist, about what Eden was trying to do as an educational charity and how they were going about doing this.

I arrived at the rather impressive Royal Institute of Great Britain ready to begin work at the UK Stem Cell Foundation. I entered the building where I met my supervisor, Hugh. He gave me a brief induction and tour of the building, including the theatre where so many major scientific discoveries have been announced.

Royal Institute of Great Britain, London

With the welcome over, we began discussing my role at the charity in more detail and the plan of action for my first week: RESEARCH. I was to build a network of sportsmen and women, sports club, sports brands and sports bloggers to contact about becoming involved with raising public awareness of the UKSCF.

The Eden Project mostly known as a popular visitor attraction in beautiful Cornwall. It is famous for having the largest captive rainforest its Rainforest Biome and also for it’s Mediterranean Biome. Additionally, they have the popular Eden Sessions during summer, which are concerts held at its main stage. However, mainly Eden is an educational charity that aims to reconnect people with the natural world and with each other. They do this by using leaflets, informational boards and interactive exhibits around the site.

The project I am involved with at the Eden Project is called ‘Life Givers’ and it aims to communicate the worlds’ and in particular Eden’s energy story using a trail of sculptures and other art-based exhibits.

The final week has been quite hectic. After finally getting hold of adobe acrobat, a software which allows you to make interactive PDFs, I have gone back to working on…

Task 1: Academic Plan

Getting to grips with the software was hard. But, generally, most of the problems I was having, others had also had, so Google could help me out. (Tech aside: Acrobat allows you to add javascript to the PDF, but it’s a bit weird getting your head around how it works).

What I ended up creating are PDFs, one for each year group, which allow students to see what grades they need to achieve at the end of each school year in order to be on track for their chosen career.

Since my last post, lots has happened. In fact, time has flown by and I can’t quite believe it’s my final week.

Alongside my projects, I have been helping to organise one of our coaching sessions for sixth former’s at a local law firm. Normally, we train students to be our coaches but in this unique case, we have trained lawyers. The students seem really keen and this week they were having speaking on Skype with all kinds of professional experts as part of the program; solicitors, aerospace engineers, robotics engineers, graphic designers. The program has been a real success.

Task 2: Coach Quiz

Over the past couple of weeks I have steered away from task 1 as I awaited the decision to purchase the necessary software.

The first days were filled with the excitement of new days, people, and feelings as I was, for the first time, thrust into life as an “adult”. I have never held down a full 9-5pm job and Pure Leapfrog will be my make or break foray into life as a worker bee.

When I first walked in the startup vibe was impossible to miss. The long labyrinthine route to the little nook in Shand Street that gave way to a cavernous work-space remade underneath a working train line (Oh there goes the 4:30 train). The place is makeshift, and endearing in the way that only a place made by people can be.